Jessica Hughes

Delicious Magic By Jessica Hughes 1 I'm in trouble. Not like an, “Oh no, I’m going to get fired for spilling coffee on very important financial papers for the boss’ new car!” kind of trouble. No, this is more “Oh no, the government is going to behead me for being a secret magic user!” kind of trouble. It’s your own stupid fault. In context I can see this is somewhat throwing you in the deep end... Not really, since I've experienced it all with you. ... so perhaps I should reverse a little, take a deep breath, and explain. Oh God, please don't. My name is Walter Hissybark (don't even start, I've heard it all), and it is the tenth of June, 2035. My favourite colour is one that humans don't have a name for yet , I work as a chocolatier Ew, chocolate. Would you stop interrupting me? No, I don't think I will, this is too much fun. Anyway! My favourite time of year is Valentine's Day. I admit, most people are cynics on that holiday, but what can I say, I'm a hopeless romantic. You're lucky I haven't eaten anything in the past ten minutes otherwise I'd have thrown up in your lap. All that natural magic, and love whirling around the place... it's enough to make a magic-user high! So “high” in fact that said magic-user slips up and does something extremely stupid. Isn't that a bit of an understatement? That may be offered as something of an explanation for what happened on February 14 th this 2 year. It started like any other day. I walked into my little shop, smiling at the little tinkling noise of the bell above the door, grabbed my apron... You mean that hideous green thing you decided on for corporate colours? ... and officially opened up shop. It was Valentine's Day... I swear you've mentioned this already. ... my busiest day of the year , but I was ready for whatever the day had to throw at me. Evidently you were not, actually. Like a captain preparing for war, I squared my shoulders and went into the little kitchen at the back, where I generally do all things chocolate. I love my little kitchen, with the old fashioned gold scales on the polished oak table, all the little weights lined up in front of it, off to the left, and my electric melting pot and thermometer in the middle, and all things to do with dipping and being dipped to the right. Sorry, I dozed off for a second there, what were you saying? Luckily I'd already prepared as much as I could, non-magically the night before, so I was ready for the first customer who literally arrived in that moment. Oh, what a happy coincidence. I barged my way out of the kitchen with an array of heart-shaped sweets on the tray I’d left in there last night and gave the customer a big smile. Placing the tray on the counter next to the cash register to distribute into the display case later, I wiped my hands on my apron and surreptitiously... Surreptitiously? Have you seen yourself? You were probably as obvious with your intentions as a baboon trying to get a mate. ... studied her. She was an odd looking lass, head to toe in black, including black hair and 3 makeup around her eyes. Because she was EVIL. “Hi!” I said, “welcome to Chocolate Dreams!” Man, that is a lame name for a chocolate shop, where did you get it, out a fortune cookie? “Good day,” she replied stiffly, but I almost didn't hear her over the massive roll of thunder that hit when she opened her mouth to speak. How much evidence do you need? She evil! I should probably mention that that was quite weird since it was a cloudless day of sunshine and birdsong. For you it's always a day of sunshine and birdsong, you optimistic freak. “Can I help you?” I prompted gently. “Yes. I want some chocolate,” she replied, almost even more stiffly than before. It's not like she wandered into a chocolate shop looking for dry cleaning, is it? I smiled reassuringly. “What kind?” “That of your darkest chocolate, so dark it is almost black,” she replied dramatically, before taking a deep breath and lowering her voice, making it soft and gentle. “With a pretty pink strawberry ganache in the centre.” “Well then, you're in luck my dear, for I have exactly what you ordered right here. Any specific shape you would like? And how many?” “Ravens. Thirteen.” So, so evil dude. So evil. Turning my back to her, I took one of the display boxes off the shelf behind me, assembled it in 4 seconds, and decided to use my magic to create her order really quickly. Ravens aren’t exactly the kind of thing I keep in my shop, you know, but I was ready to serve the lady fast. She appeared to be in a hurry, if the way she was shifting from foot to foot was any indication. Also, she was pretty, and impressing a pretty girl is always something a gentleman should strive to do. A I pointed my left pinkie finger Cause that's not weird. It's the only way my magic works! Tsk, shame. Okay! So I pointed my left pinkie finger into the box. Black smoke poured out of my hand and coalesced into the box as the customer's order. I turned back around with a big smile and handed it to her. She had a weird look on her face, one eyebrow up as if she was suspicious. She saw you, she saw you, you stupid idiot! I had a moment of panic. My mouth went dry and my stomach flipped as my mind very helpfully showed me what would happen if she had saw me. Flashes of a trial, the customer pointing a shaking, accusatory finger at me, an immovable judge and the resounding smack of the gavel sealing my fate. Shuffling up to the guillotine, a town crier telling the crowd of peasants below the platform why I was there, and the cacophany of boos nearly deafening me. Okay, admittedly, my mind drew on French Revolutionary times because I like History and no magic user had been revealed in years so nobody really knows the exact details of what would happen, just pain and death. She gingerly took took the box from my hands, like the contents might bite her. “That'll be $2.50,” I said politely, and she handed me $5. “Keep the change,” she said roughly and swept out the shop, merchandise clutched to her chest, leaving only the tinkle of the bell in her wake. “How weird.” I said to myself... 5 Weirder than you talking to yourself? ... and busied myself waiting for the next customer by putting the heart-shaped candies in the display case. Thoughts of the strange lady and her strange order, and whether she'd seen me do my magic... Oh, she definitely did! ... plagued my mind for the rest of the day. Luckily the next of the customers were normal with orders I was prepared for, like milk chocolate hearts with “BE MINE” stamped on them. Seriously? I managed to get through the rest of the day like a zombie... Just like normal then. ... lost in thought, doing things mechanically. When the time finally came to shut up shop, I was almost relieved, able to head home and think this all out in the privacy of my own space. Once I got home, however, the reality of the situation hit me, and I slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, absolutetely exhausted. Turns out, worrying the whole day really tires a guy out. I looked down at my hands and found they were full of the mail I’d unconciously collected from the mailbox at the door when I’d arrived home, and I riffled through it. It was mostly bills, and a letter from my sister in Peru... She's the cool one who deals with dragons right? ... but one of them, right at the back of the pile, was a surprise. Putting all the other letters to the side, I took that one, and weighed it in my hand. It was heavy, the parchment of the envelope was thick and creamy coloured, and the words on the front telling the postman where to deliver it looked like they'd been written by a drunken spider. Who do you think you are, Sherlock Holmes? Besides, maybe it had been written by a drunken 6 spider, don't discriminate, everyone needs a job! I grabbed a nearby butter knife and carefully slit the top open. I then shook the single piece of folded paper out the envelope as carefully as if it was a bomb. Opening the sheet of paper, I read WE NO WHAT U R carefully cut out with letters from the newspaper, like some old noir detective film. Showing your age a little there, buddy. Well, I am about one hundred and fifty years old. Touche. Instead of losing my mind and letting the anxiety I could feel fluttering in my gut take over again, like it had most of the day already, I took a deep breath and studied both sides of the paper. There was a shape I couldn't make out stamped into the blank side of the page in what looked like the glue that was used for the letters. How odd. How odd indeed... I wondered who this had come from. There was no return address or clue as to how to track the sender. Isn't that always the way with blackmail letters? Or even, arguably, the point? And so it began. I started getting letters like that on a weekly basis, some threatening, some weirdly friendly like “I HOPE U HAVE A NYCE DAY 2DAY”... Perhaps a secret admirer who also wants to kill you? ... but still quite worrying. Many a sleepless night of tossing and turning was spent, agonising that I was going to die a painful, hideous death. I tried to think of who I could go to for help in this, my darkest hour of need, but unfortunately my family is either dead or in another country, and my old teacher from Merlin’s Secret Academy For The Magically Inclined wasn’t exactly lucid at the 7 best of times. The only person I could think of who knew my secret and had the inclination to act on it was the scary Raven-lady from Valentine's Day, who maybe, just maybe, had seen my magic. Well, I tried to put it out of my mind, and the best way to do that was to practice making my magic stronger, according to my old mentor, Crazy Harold. You do realise his name includes 'crazy' in it? Yeah, well, when the teachers at the academy were picking out kids for their classes like a high school dodgeball team, he was the last one to pick, and I was the last one left to be chosen. So anyway, that’s what I did. Generally I could fill one order and turn about five inanimate objects into chocolate a day, but with practice I was finding I could bump it up to about eight. Oh, wow, three more things. What an achievement. Before long I was finding if I really didn't think about it, I could just touch things and they'd slowly get a chocolate covering over them. So they don't even turn hollow? They just get a covering? Yup. Which is why I tend to stick with fruit. I'm facepalming too hard to answer. Before long Easter was rolling around and I was touching eggs, and flowers, and all sorts of Easter-y things. There was much more of a variety in the shop, I can tell you. I'm sure the customers were egg-static. Har har har. Anyway, I was open through all three days of the holiday and who turned up for thirteen dark chocolate ravens, this time with a marshmallow filling? You guessed it... Did you hear me guessing? I didn't hear me guessing! ... it was the scary lady from Valentine's Day! This time I was even more careful, and headed into the back kitchen before I did my thing , but she still had that funny look on her face when I handed 8 the box of goods over. And she gave me five dollars for a $2.50 bill again. Not that you're complaining, I’m sure. After I passed her the box and she handed me the $5, I cleared my throat. Immediately her head shot up from where she was looking inside the box I had just handed her. “Yes?” she asked brusquely and I swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. Her gaze was intense at the best of times when she wasn’t actually looking at you, but when you had the brunt of it zeroed in on you? It was intimidating to say the least. “Sent any mail recently?” was what I was going to ask, I swear, but instead when I opened my mouth a squeak emerged before I was able to cover it up with some more manly throat-clearing. “What is it?” She checked her watch. “E-enjoy the chocolates.” I copped out lamely, and she nodded her head in approval before swishing her way out the door. **** Several months passed without incident. I mean, sure, I still got the letters, but they were a weekly occurrence I was expecting like the weekly chocolate delivery I got from the local dairy. They weren't particularly scary, or threatening. They hadn't specified what they were going to do now that they knew I had magic. And each letter had the same odd mark stamped on it in glue. Other than that there was no new clues. It frustrated me too much to think about so I decided to just stop opening the letters with the drunken-spider writing on the front. Damn. But I still knew they were there, piling up on the corner of the kitchen counter. For some reason I 9 couldn't bring myself to throw them away. If they were painstakingly, almost, dare I say, lovingly put together by my Raven lady, then why would I throw all her hard work away? Oh, man, don't tell me you're falling in love with some hostile letters and a hostile woman you've only interacted with twice in your life? I spent each evening during and after supper just staring at that pile of letters... And sighing like a pathetic schoolgirl. ... until one night I could no longer bear it and opened them all. She seemed to have finally worked out an ultimatum as a more recent one said “WE NO WHO U R AND U NO WHAT WE WANT OR WE R GOIN TO THE AUFORYTEES”... ‘She’ also had no idea how to spell, apparently. Hey! Her spelling was adorable. However, I had no idea what she wanted, or any idea how to find out. So I figured the best way would be to wait her out and hope she turned up at my shop. So you ended up looking pathetically at the door in excitement every time the bell rang. Turns out I had to wait a long time, from Easter to Halloween, in fact. By then I'd become somewhat despondent and depressed, and my customers and magic had noticed. Things were only half-covered with untempered, gritty chocolate, and I was no longer cheerful and friendly like I had been since I opened the shop. By Halloween even my regulars were starting to give up on me. However, on the day before that of piumpkins and trick or treating, I said to myself I wasn't going to look up in depressed hope... Let me guess... and that's when she walked in. What is it with you and well-timed customers? ... and that is when she walked in, like an angel of darkness, dressed from head to toe in a witch's outfit. So, her usual outfit with a pointy hat? 10 Pretty much. Well, that and a raven, a live one, sitting on her shoulder. And her order? Thirteen dark chocolate ravens with a pumpkin spice ganache filling. She seemed to only like seasonal fillings, for which I don’t blame her. The more often you come and get something, the less special it is, I guess. Since I figured she knew already, I grabbed a box from behind me, and this time, I performed my magic in front of her eyes. So you shot black smoke out your pinky finger in front of her? How romantic. What a story to tell the grandkids one day. And she looked shocked, like someone had just murdered the raven right in front of her eyes. “You... have magic?” she gasped in terror. I nodded proudly. “You mean, every time I've walked in here, you've given me a product... of magic?” she wailed. Not very bright, this one, is she? “Playing games, I see? Okay, that's fine, I can play along,” I replied cheerfully, folding up the box and handing it to her, to which she reacted as if I had handed her a box of snakes. “Playing games? What are you talking about?” she demanded. “You've been sending me beautiful threatening letters,” I sighed. Dreamily, no doubt. “... and I loved every one of them. Raven-lady, please will you come and have a coffee with me? I’d love to talk to you about life, love...” ... your terrible spelling... “...and anything else that might take our fancy.” She shook her head vehemently and kept backing away from where I was standing behind the cash register, as always, moaning “No, no, no!” until she hit the wall at the back of the shop and had 11 to stop moving. “But. The letters?” I asked, bewildered. “What letters?” she screeched, so loudly I winced. “The ones you sent me proclaiming you knew what I was. Matter of fact, what about the look on your face every time I gave you your box of chocolates? Not to mention the lightning bolts announcing your arrival and departure the first time you set foot in here?” “Sir, I have never sent you any letters of the sort. I had no idea you were of magical folk, and now I do, I'm in terrible danger! I can’t help the fact that I always look like I’m judging someone...” This lady is my people. Can we keep her? “... and as to the thunderbolts... did you actually see them as well as hear them?” I shook my head silently, struck speechless by the verbal dressing down I was being given. Man, if I'd known this was the way to shut you up, I'd have done it years ago! She continued, undeterred, with her tirade. “You only heard them, good sir, because that was the ringtone on my phone at the time! Good day to you!” she said, and swept out of my shop, and my life, forever. **** “So you see why I'm in trouble, Rufus?” I ask rhetorically. My cat has been sitting on the pile of letters from the blackmailer throughout the story, gently swinging his tail to and fro. He lifts his left paw up, studying one of the claws on the end and replies with Not really, no, and his voice echoes in my head. He’s said that he’s not surprised his voice does that since there’s not much else in there to stop his words bouncing around my skull. Languidly, he 12 turns his great, yellow, freakishly intelligent eyes on me. “I have no idea who sent those letters!” I wail, and dramatically cross my arms and on the tabletop and bury my face in them. You're such a drama queen, he mutters. I sense some movement coming from his end of the table, before feeling a tiny paw patting me on the head. There, there, it'll be all right, etcetera, etcetera, he says with a sigh so deep it sounded like he was heading to the gallows for comforting me. “Um. Thanks?” I say, and as I look up, I swear he's just finished rolling his eyes. I keep telling you, idiot, he says as he turns around to head back to his 'seat', but not before flicking me in the face with a pure black tail, that all the clues are right there in front of you. I tilt my head, looking at how he's sitting on the pile of letters, and I'm pretty much one hundred percent sure that his paw is on that weirdly stamped mark in glue to help me along. Funnily enough, his paw fits perfectly into the little stamp mark, and I gasp. “Rufus, you genius! The letter writer has a cat!” The cat just groans and literally falls forward to smack his head into the table. A muffled, You're so painfully stupid, comes from his general direction and I don't take offence at it, as usual, having long since realised it was his roundabout way of telling me he loves me. “I love you too!” I reply cheerfully, and all I hear is a groan as I get up to put the kettle on and make some tea, much happier now that I have a lead. Granted, half the world besides me has a cat, but it's still a lead, right? By the time I come back, Rufus is sitting up, having lifted his head from the table, and has a mouse between his paws. A surprisingly alive mouse, not that I can say much about how it looks (mangy and thin). “Who've you got there, Ruf?” I ask, taking a sip of my tea and wincing when it scalds my mouth. Don't call me 'Ruf', he growls, and the mouse trembles a little, like it knows it's in for it. This is Squeaker, and he's my mousebody. 13 “Yes, I can see he's a mouse, but not exactly a body yet, is he?” I ask, peering closer at the quivering nose and shiny little black eyes, with dark rings under them. Now I look closer, the poor thing is trembling, too. The cat sighs and seems to be one step off massaging the bridge of his nose with his paw. I mean, he helps me with things. “Like finding the best sunspots and licking those hard to reach places for you?” Something like that. As well as, I don't know, writing your address on a couple of envelopes and putting them in the mailbox for me? Also throwing in the random nice letter, and atrocious spelling. The mouse nodds proudly at what his master just said, and taps the letter hoping I'd have a nice day with his right front paw. “Wait. Wait. Back up.” I put my palms up in front of me as if to try and stop this catastrophic news from actually sinking in. “You are the ones who sent those letters? What kind of psychotic jerk in fur are you?” I stand up from the kitchen table so abruptly that the chair I was sitting on topples backwards. Technically I sent the letters, Squeaker actioned them with my instruction and supervision, the cat replies, blinking his creepy eyes at me. And you know what a psycho I am, haven’t you been getting the hints? Don’t answer that, the whole reason I did this is proof that you don’t get hints. Now you're going to shut up and sit down while I explain, because you obviously need an explanation. I had to sit through your dreary story without saying anything about it... “But...” What did I say? he asks, stalking towards me across the tabletop, flicking a claw out with each step. He’s quite intimidating when he wants to be, even though he’s just a medium sized, pure black cat. I put my finger on my lips, and he nods like he’s impressed. Good. Now for me, this all started when you left the house about a week before Valentine's Day a year ago without, once again, filling 14 my food bowl. I ask you, how is a cat to function with only half a bowl for the whole day? I was in a foul mood all day until Squeaker helped me hatch a plan. The mouse nods proudly and tries to groom its fur a little. I've known for a while that your pressure point is being outed as a magic-user. It would be really, very simple to threaten you. So we got some parchment from your study and got to work. You leave the gossip mags about all the magic celebrities all over the house. Mostly in the bathroom. So I got Squeaker to drag them out, and with my supervision and dictation he chewed each letter out the magazine and I glued 'em down. Glue, however, has an awfully annoying tendency to get everywhere, and so I thought we were done for when you first noticed my... signature, I guess you'd call it. But oooohhh, nooooo you had no idea it was me and instead obsessed on poor 'Raven-lady' when you should've been focusing closer to home. Did I say 'closer to home'? I meant at home. “But how did you get the letter into the mailbox?” I ask tiredly, a little bit muffled, having put the chair I had knocked over back upright and sat down in it with my head in my hands during his explanation thus far. Sent Squeaker up to the mailbox with the letter tied around his tail. Took him an awful long time to shimmy his way up there, but he got there in the end, didn't you Squeakles? Rufus all but cooes, ruffling the fur on top of the mouse's head, who, in turn, lives up to his name and squeaks happily at the positive attention. “So how were you planning on... ratting me out, no pun intended, if I didn't see to your demands?” Like such. Squeaker! The camera! Before my very eyes, Squeaker goes hurrying off, but comes back within two seconds of leaving, dragging a collar with identical pendant on it that Rufus usually wears. The cat speaks while the mouse takes off his old collar and puts the new one on. 15 Except, you see, the collar has cameras studded in each, fake, diamante stone. And this one itches much less. But I digress. The plan was that I would sit in a high up place and film you and your... antics... If cats could talk with a curled lip in a sneer, Rufus would be the first to achieve it. ... and we'd send it to the media via your email address. Goodness knows I've seen you use it enough times to work how to do it myself. And if a human can master it in a week, I, the more superior of the species can definitely master it within a few hours. He’s gone back to studying his claws nonchalantly, and the brunt of what he’s saying is finally starting to sink in. Betrayed. By my own cat and a mangy mouse. What is the world coming to? I mean, I thought it was crazy enough when the President of All and Sundry had declared beheadings for all magic folk. But now this? I sit back in my chair in a daze. Ah, you see Squeaker, what we've done is, at last, penetrating that thick skull of his. Let's not mention he just spilled his proverbial beans to the 'Raven-lady' who could report him, oh no. I hear Rufus whisper to his dastardly sidekick. “You do realise that now I know your plan I'll never do magic in front of you again?” I ask. Pssh, the cat scoffs. You can no more resist your magic than I can catnip. We have you on a tight leash now, don't we Squeakers? The mouse nods enthusiastically, a goofy grin on his face the only indication he understands a word of what’s going on at the moment. I sigh. “I do believe you've got me. However did I find a cat who could outsmart me?” I ask the room dramatically, and I see Rufus' ears twitch. Well, even the stupidest of cats is smarter than the dumbest human, he says matter-of-factly. Now, for what I expect from you: three course meals for breakfast, lunch and supper, with a catnip entree and only the finest fish, every day. I want you to wait on me, paw and tail. I want you to get a little jester hat for Squeaker so he can entertain me on the dullest of days. I want a thorough cleaning after supper... with tongue, not brush. Your tongue to be specific, he demands, sauntering towards me with each word, tail in the air, coming closer, closer, closer... 16 “I think you underestimate us dumb humans.” I spit as I grab him by the stomach and he gives off a startled yowl. Grabbing the collar off the cat's neck while watching the mouse go rogue and getting ready to throw himself at my face is an entirely new experience I never thought I'd ever get to try. I dump the cat on the ground, dodge the furry projectile coming to my face and stand, triumphantly holding the collar above my head. “Take that, you scheming cat!” I crow, running out the door to throw the collar in the bin. I happen to miss Rufus whispering, You ain't seen nothing yet. Squeaker! Let Operation Furry Ears commence. 17